“Here’s hoping it will be a dandy day,” said Herb, as the boys parted at Bob’s gate.
“It looks as though it were going to be,” replied Bob, looking at the sky. “But after supper I’ll tune in and get the weather report by radio.”
“Anything you don’t do by radio?” asked Joe, with a grin.
“Oh, I set my watch by the Arlington signal every night and a few other things,” laughed Bob. “Fact is, I’m hanging around the receiving set every spare minute I have for fear I’ll let something get by me. Radio has got me, and got me for fair.”
The weather report was favorable and Bob slept in peace. And when he opened his eyes on the following morning he found that Uncle Sam’s weather bureau had been right in this particular instance, for a lovelier fall morning, to his way of thinking, had never dawned.
He ate breakfast a little more quickly than usual, and had barely finished when the other radio boys were at his door loaded with lunches and ready to start. Jimmy especially was well furnished in the matter of provisions, for he carried two packages while the rest of the boys were content with one.
“Aren’t you afraid you’ll be hunchbacked carrying both those bales of goods?” asked Herb, with mock anxiety.
“Not a bit,” responded Jimmy cheerfully. “One of them is full of doughnuts, and I expect to eat them on the way. You see I was in such a hurry that I didn’t eat much of a breakfast – ”
“What?” exclaimed Bob.
“Can I believe my ears?” asked Herb plaintively.
“Say it again and say it slow,” urged Joe.
“I mean,” Jimmy hurried to correct himself, “not so much as I might have eaten. I had a bit of cereal – ”
“Catch on to that ‘bit,’” murmured Herb.
“And some bacon and eggs and a slice of cold meat from the roast last night and some hot rolls and – ”
“Outside of that you didn’t have anything to eat,” said Joe. “All right, Jimmy, old boy, we understand. But shake a leg now and let’s get under way. This is too fine a day to be spending it in a chinfest, and besides we can have plenty of that as we go along.”
The air was brisk and stimulating, with just enough warmth imparted by the sun to prevent its being cold, and a soft autumnal haze hung over the landscape and clothed it in mellow beauty. It was the kind of day when Nature is at her best and when it is good just to be alive.
The boys were like so many young colts turned out to pasture, and joked and jested as they went along. Laughter came easily to their lips and shone through their eyes, while the joy of youth ran through their veins and made them tingle to their finger-tips. Life was roseate and they had not a care in the world.
A walk of between two and three miles brought them to the woods for which they had set out. The forest covered a great many acres and was full of noble trees, chestnut, hickory, and many other varieties.
As Bob had said, the year had been an unusually good one for nuts, and the trees were loaded with them. The frost of a little time before had been just sufficient to make them ready to pick, and the ground was already strewn with the half-opened burrs of many that had been shaken from the trees. Others still hung to the boughs by so slender and brittle a thread that it was only necessary to hurl clubs up into the trees to have them come down in showers.
The boys had brought big bags along with them to carry the nuts they might gather, and before long these had most of the wrinkles spread out of them by the steadily accumulating collection of chestnuts that formed the bulk of their treasure, although they had a good many hickory nuts as well.
The active work gave them all an appetite, a thing that came to them very easily under almost any circumstances, and a little before noon they ceased for a while from gathering the nuts and bestirred themselves in gathering leaves and brushwood for a fire. Their bags were more than half full, and from what they had seen they knew they would have little trouble in finishing filling them up to the very drawing strings.
They gathered together a little cairn of rocks and built the fire inside of it, keeping it fed to such effect that before long the stones were at a white heat. Then they drew the fire away and on the heated stones roasted their potatoes and a large number of the chestnuts they had gathered. They had brought plenty of salt and butter along, and when at last the potatoes were done they seasoned them and ate them with a relish exceeding anything that would have attended the eating of them at a regular meal in their homes. An epicure might have complained of the smoky flavor, but to the boys, seated on the leaf-carpeted ground flecked with the sunlight that sifted through the trees, the food was simply ambrosial.
With the potatoes they dispatched the rest of the food they had brought along. Then, with a feeling of absolute content, they stretched out luxuriously on the ground and munched the roasted chestnuts in beatific indolence.
For an hour or two they rested there, and then Bob rose and stretched himself and called his reluctant friends to action.
“It would be a sin and a shame to go out of these woods without having our bags crammed to bursting,” he said. “Let’s get a hustle on, and just for variety let’s try another part of the woods.”
“All right,” assented Joe, while Herb and Jimmy, though more slowly, roused themselves.
They picked up their bags and moved from place to place, choosing those sections where the trees grew thickest and the outlook for nuts was most promising.
“Better be a little careful,” warned Joe, after they had gone a considerable distance. “Part of this wood belongs to Buck Looker’s father, and perhaps he’d have some objection to our nutting here.”
“I don’t think any one would kick,” responded Bob. “Everybody around here regards the woods as common property, as far as nutting is concerned. Besides, there’s no way of telling, as far as I know, what section belongs to him and what to other people.”
“There’s something that will give us the tip,” remarked Herb, pointing through the trees to a clearing in which they saw a two-story cottage. “That house belongs to Mr. Looker, though nobody has lived in it for a long while and I guess he’s just letting it go to rack and ruin.”
The house did indeed look shaky and dilapidated. Some of the railing and boards of the low veranda had been broken in or rotted away, and the whole place bore the look of decay that comes to houses that for a long time have been destitute of occupants.
“Looks as if it would fall to pieces if you breathed on it,” said Herb.
“Old enough to have false teeth,” commented Jimmy. “I suppose Mr. Looker lets it stand simply because it’s cheaper than pulling it down.”
The boys gathered nuts for perhaps two hours longer, and then they had to stop because their bags would not hold any more. Jimmy was already groaning in anticipation of having to carry his home.
“That’ll weigh a ton by the time we get to Clintonia,” he grumbled, as he eyed it with considerable apprehension.
“Hard to please some people,” commented Herb. “You’d be kicking like a steer if you didn’t have any to carry, and now you’re sore because you’ve got enough to last all winter.”
“Might as well leave enough for other people,” said Jimmy, with a spasm of generosity.
“There are more nuts here than will ever be picked,” replied Herb. “For that matter, some other people are getting them now. I’ve heard them thrashing about in the brush for the last few minutes only a little way from here.”
“Funny we don’t hear voices then,” said Joe.
“Perhaps they’re deaf mutes,” suggested Jimmy, and adroitly ducked the pass that Joe made at him.
The noise